STALACTITES. 
357 
distance below us. The dreadful depth of this 
place, and the horror of the descent through a 
miserable darkness into it, made me look to the 
lane of diamonds, if 1 may so call it, through which 
we had just passed ; and I could not but think I 
was leaving heaven to descend into the infernal 
regions. The hope of something fine at my jour- 
ney’s end tempted me, however, to trust myself to 
the rope and my guides at the top to let myself 
down. After about two minutes dangling in this 
posture, not without much pain as well as terror, I 
found myself safe at the bottom, and our friends 
all soon followed the example. When we had con- 
gratulated here with one another on our safe de- 
scent, I was inquiring where the grotto, as they 
called it, was. Our guides, shaking their heads, 
told us, we had a great way to that yet ; and 
led us forward about thirty yards under a roof of 
ragged rocks, in a scene of terrible darkness, and at 
a vast depth from the surface of the earth, to the 
brink of another precipice much deeper and more 
terrible than the former. Two of the guides went 
down here with their torches first, and by their 
light we could see that this passage was not so per- 
pendicular indeed as the other, but lay in a very 
steep slant, with a very slippery rock for the bot- 
tom ; vast pieces of rough rugged rocks jutting out 
in many places on the right hand, in the descent, 
and forcing the guides sometimes to climb over, 
sometimes to creep under them, and sometimes 
round them ; and on the left a thousand dark ca- 
